


already gone.

by lordvoldyfarts



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, There's a brief LaFerry scene but it's too short for me to actually tag LaFerry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:44:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2650823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordvoldyfarts/pseuds/lordvoldyfarts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She leaves her with a note on the pillowcase and no explanation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	already gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to Already Gone by Kelly Clarkson while reading this to get the full emotional experience. Also hold on tight my friends, this one doesn't end quite as badly as the summary suggests.

It’s in the spot where her hair is usually sprawled out when she wakes up in the morning.

It’s carefully folded and her name is on the front in the very familiar loopy script she’s come to recognize as Carmilla’s. It’s old fashioned and beautiful. It looks more like calligraphy than regular handwriting. One night while they were lying in bed, hands intertwined, Laura asked how she learned to write so beautifully. Carmilla only responded with a despondent chuckle and a murmured, “Practice.” Laura picks up the note with tender hands, a small smile on her face. This isn’t the first time she’d found a note on the pillow. Carmilla leaves them for her whenever she leaves in the middle of the night to clear her head. Right after they defeated Carmilla’s Mother, she would often escape the warm confines of their comforter in favor of the chilly night air and the cover of the stars. When Laura would wake to an empty bed, she would be terrified. Eventually, Carmilla took to leaving notes for her so she wouldn’t worry. They were always quite sweet, topped off with an intricately drawn heart signed next to her name.

She opens the folds of the note gently, her small smile growing in anticipation.

It falls as soon as she reads the first few words.

_My dearest Laura,_

_Before I say anything else, I first have to say this. I love you. Please never doubt that._

_I love you more than I have ever loved anything in this universe. You mean more to me than every single star in the sky. That is why I have to do this._

_You are brighter than the North Star, Laura Hollis. You carry in you more potential for greatness than I have seen in all of my lifetimes. And I met Jane Austen. You are wonderful and sweet and determined and you deserve every single good thing this wretched world has to offer._

_I am not one of them._

_I am the darkness. I am the shadow cast over you. I am the weight tied to your ankle forcing you down into the depths of the ocean. I am only ruining you. I am the one stopping that light from shining and I cannot be held responsible for that._

_My Mother was only the first obstacle. There will be many more and my darkness, my past and my future, will be what prevents us from hurdling over them. You deserve happiness. You deserve a family. You deserve a wife and kids and a_ normal _life. I cannot give that to you. What I can give you is a life on the road, moving from place to place every few years before someone starts to notice that I never age and you do. I can give you uncertainty and three centuries worth of baggage but I simply cannot find it in myself to put that all on you._

_I know I am taking a cowards way out by leaving this letter but I know that I could not bear to look into your eyes while I told you this. That little sparkle they get when you look at me would have convinced me to stay and that would be selfish. I have to let you go. I love you enough to know that I have to set you free and allow you to fly._

_I need you to move on. I need you to forget me as best you can. Look back at my memory fondly but do only that. Move forward. Find a girl and settle down. Fall in love and do everything for her that I could never do for you. Love her with everything that you have. Love her for me._

_I think, perhaps, in another life we may have been meant to love each other. But that life is not this one. You are much too bright for me, my love. You will be able to blossom without my dark cloud hovering over you._

_Please know that this is the hardest thing I will ever have to do. Having the pleasure of loving you has made this eternity I have been cursed with worth living. I will remember every angle and curve of you for as long as I exist._

_None of this is your fault, please do not blame yourself. You loved me as best as you could and it means everything to me that you even gave me a fraction of your heart._

_Fly high, Laura Hollis. I hope to see your name in big, bold print someday._

_Eternally yours,_

The letter drops from her trembling hands the moment she reads the last line. Her whole body is shaking. Her chin is quivering and tears have welled in her eyes and she wills them not to fall. She picks up her phone, nearly dropping it straight onto the ground because her fingers just won’t stay still. She dials Carmilla and holds the phone up to her ear, hoping Carmilla will answer and tell her that this is all some kind of cruel joke. That she didn’t just decide to up and leave in the middle of the night, with only a note full of bullshit as an explanation.

Not even a full dial tone before the call cuts to voicemail. The tears start to fall then and she chokes a sob into the receiver. “You’re a fucking coward.” She whispers through tears after the beep sounds. She’s sure that Carmilla has discarded the phone by phone by now and her message will remain unheard but she can’t keep this inside. “How dare you take this choice away from me? How dare you claim that you’re doing this for my own good? All this does is prove that you don’t know me at all because _you_ are my own good, you selfish fucking vampire.” She hangs up after that, anger flowing through her veins like a shot of heroin. She throws her phone across the room. It lands in the middle of Carmilla’s still-made bed. She pulls her knees up to her chest and buries her face in them. How _dare_ she?

Not more than an hour later, she’s got the phone in her hands again. It took her nearly that entire length of time to get the courage to pick the thing up. As soon as she’s over on Carmilla’s side of the room, the smell of the girl overwhelms her and she’s got tears pricking at the back of her eyes again. She flips open the phone. Nothing. Not a single missed call. Not a single text. She can’t say she wasn’t expecting that, because she absolutely was, but it still feels like another blow to her already crushed heart. She sniffles, trying to cover up the sound of tears in her throat, while she presses the number three on her speed dial again. Straight to voicemail. “I-If there’s any chance that this is just some kind of joke, now is the time to give it up, Carm. Walk back in here and hug me and tell me it’s April Fools Day. I’ll forgive you, I promise I will just come back.” Her voice is cracking. “Please. Please come back.” Her voice is a whisper now and she hangs up just before another sob exists her throat. Her light is still off, she hadn’t the energy to turn it on and she found the lack of light to be soothing. Maybe if she closed her eyes, she could imagine the spot of darkness was Carmilla herself.

Perry knocks on the door two hours after the second call and Laura is on Carmilla’s bed now. The pillow beneath her head is tearstained and Laura’s clutching the yellow pillow to her chest, one handing holding the letter. She’s surprised she was willing to leave it behind. It smells more like Carmilla now than it does Laura and she has it pressed to her nose. As long as she can smell her, she can pretend that she’s still here. She’s read the letter at least four more times now, each time hurting worse than the previous. When Perry knocks, Laura doesn’t answer. She hopes that if she’s silent, Perry will get the hint and go away. She doesn’t.

 She pushes the door open, starting on some kind of rant about politeness that quickly fades off of her tongue when she sees Laura’s eyes squeezed shut and tears silently streaming down her cheeks. She’s sitting next to her within seconds, bringing Laura’s head into her lap. She strokes her hair. “Laura, sweetie, what’s wrong?” She says and Laura just holds up the letter wordlessly. Perry gives a faint ‘oh’ of acknowledgement when she gets all of the way through. “I’m so sorry, Laura.” She says and it just makes Laura cry harder. Perry says nothing else after that but she keeps running her hand through her hair.

Laura keeps imagining that’s Carmilla’s fingers threading through her locks.

-

When Perry finally leaves that night, Laura is sleeping soundly. Perry only makes it to just outside the door before she’s dialing Carmilla’s number on her own phone. Her eyebrows are angrily furrowed and she gets the familiar sound of Carmilla’s voicemail. “Carmilla. This is Perry, your floor don speaking. I went to your room today and I found Laura crying on your bed with this ridiculous note clutched in her hands. I have to tell you that this is unacceptable behavior and you need to come back right this instant. Also you didn’t terminate your hall contract so someone from the University will call to speak with you shortly.” She quips before hanging up the phone. She retreats back to her room, where LaFontaine is sleeping. She wakes them up with a kiss to their temple. They roll toward her and sleepily fling an arm over her lap. Their eyes slowly flutter open and they grumble,

“’M sleepin’” Perry laughs as they snuggle into the top of her thigh. They’re back to sleep within seconds. Perry’s hand runs through their hair.

“Don’t ever leave me.” She whispers. LaFontaine shifts slightly.

“I won’t.” They say in that sleep peppered voice that Perry loves so much. She sighs, her mind drifting back to Laura, alone in that room. She shifts so she’s laying down as best she can, threading her fingers through LaFontaine’s hair. She’s lucky, she realizes. To have someone so fully devoted to her. She only wishes Laura could say the same.

-

Laura wakes the next morning, flopping over and throwing her arm over empty space. As soon as her arm hits the cold sheets beneath her, she remembers. Carmilla’s gone.

She doesn’t get out of bed.

She keeps her phone charged and in front of her, hoping at any moment it will ring and she’ll be able to hear Carmilla’s voice.

It takes her nearly seven hours to call again. “I know you’re probably not…even listening to these wherever you are. I just. Have to say it. I’m angry with you, I’m so angry but I know if you walked through that door right now I would kiss you with everything that I have. Because I love you. I will _always_ love you, even if you don’t think it’s enough. And it should be. It really should be.” She hangs up.

She showers that day and she wears the perfume Carmilla likes best, naively hoping that maybe super senses cover smells from over miles away.

-

She calls three more times the next day, her speech nearly unintelligible because she’s speaking through sobs. They wrack her whole body.

She knows now that Carmilla isn’t coming back. If she was, she would be here by now. The sobs are strong enough to make her whole body shake, from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. She cries until she’s dry heaving over the waste basket. She cries until her head starts to feel like its been filled with two tons of cement. She cries until her eyes have dried and nothing is even coming out of her anymore, just hiccups and wailing noises. She locks her door and doesn’t let Perry in.

When she calls, she begs for Carmilla to come back. She says that she’ll do anything, she’ll let her turn her if it means she would just _come back_. She tells the voicemail that she misses her like crazy and that each time she looks at her side of the room, she starts to feel hollow.

She yells and screams and she breaks whatever she get her hands on from Carmilla’s side of the room.

She’s angry now. Angry that Carmilla was too cowardly to break up with her to her face. Angry that Carmilla slipped out without even a goodbye kiss. Angry that she didn’t feel her leave. Shouldn’t she have been able to feel her leave? That’s what soulmates are supposed to do. Feel each other.

She’s angry at herself then. Why didn’t she see this coming? Shouldn’t she have realized that Carmilla was pulling away? Maybe she did. Maybe she just ignored it.

-

It takes a week before she can leave her room. Perry drags her to class and she nearly leaves when she sees Danny, with whom she’s on vaguely friendly terms with now. She wants to turn tail and run but Perry forces her to sit down and take notes during her lit class.

She buys a gallon of ice scream after that and doesn’t leave her bed.

She calls again.

The phone still doesn’t ring.

-

The last voicemail she leaves before the mailbox fills is this one, “I love you. I’m not mad anymore. I just miss you. I miss your arms around me and the feeling of your hair tickling my back. I miss the way you would kiss me good morning and then bring me hot chocolate. I miss how you looked at me. I miss how I would catch you staring while I was working on a lit assignment. I miss how you would stare until I stopped working and kissed you. I miss your little smirk of satisfaction whenever you successfully distracted me. I miss how you would sneak up behind me and wrap your arms around my waist and kiss my neck. I miss how you would lay with me while I fell asleep even though you were supposed to be awake. I miss the sound of your voice whispering stories from the 1700s in my ear. I just. I miss us. I love you, Carmilla. You’re my soulmate and I’m never going to stop waiting for you.”

-

It’s six months later and she’s taken to writing letters to say what she has to to Carmilla. She never sends them, but it helps to get her feelings out on paper.

She’s got a date tonight. Her first since Carmilla left. She doesn’t really want to go, Perry is practically forcing her, but she thinks maybe it might be good for her. She knows she’s never going to move on from Carmilla, that she’ll always be the love of her life, but it can’t hurt to go on a date and see if she can’t at least get a new friend out of the whole thing.

It’s spring now and the air is light and the flowers are blooming. It helps her mood to see things around her growing, living, existing. They were wilted six months ago too and now look where they are.

The door to her room is unlocked. She doesn’t know how Perry managed, but she never got a new roommate. Laura knows that Perry is privy to the fact that Laura will always be hoping for Carmilla to come back and Laura thinks she did it because it’s the only thing she could do to help.

Her eyebrows furrow when she twists the doorknob and pushes the door open easily. She could swear she locked it this morning…..She’s looking down when she walks into the room, fiddling with her keys. She drops her book bag down in front of the closet and she’s halfway to the mini fridge when she hears the clearing of a throat. She freezes. She turns and on the bed in all of her leather clad glory is Carmilla.

Laura’s jaw drops as the girl gives her a shaky smile and stands from the bed. “Been awhile, huh cutie?” She says, hands folding behind her back. Laura is still speechless. She looks the same ( _of course she does, she’s a vampire,_ she thinks to herself) though her eyes seem darker and her clothes are new. Laura shakes her head.

“After six months, that’s honestly what you’re going to say to me?” Laura says and she’s not sure how her mouth is speaking because her brain has most certainly not caught up with this situation yet. Carmilla takes a step forward, one of her hands reaching out, and Laura moves back. Carmilla pauses, dropping her hand back to her side.

“I know. You have every right to be upset with me.” Laura snorts.

“You bet your bloodsucking ass I do. You _left_. You walked out of this room six months ago, leaving me with nothing more than a note and a broken heart. Do you expect that I’m going to welcome you back into my life with open arms?” She asks. Her voice is raising now and Carmilla at least has the decency to hang her head in shame.

“No. But I had to come back.” She pauses and she finally looks Laura in the eye. “Give me five minutes. I’ll explain to you….everything as best as I can. If, when I finish, you still don’t want me here, I’ll find somewhere else to stay but I’m not leaving. Not again.” She says the last part purposefully and Laura finds herself nodding, moving to sit on the bed next to her. “I was terrified. Of you. Of us. I knew I loved you. That much was clear to me since we took down my Mother. I just hadn’t realized how much of myself I had given up to you. I had shown you the darkest corners of my heart and you accepted them without a second thought. If anything, you were there, cleaning the cobwebs out with a flashlight in your hands. And I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t ready for someone like you to love me as wholly and completely as you do-did. I was afraid that even after everything, I was still too much of a monster to be worthy of your love. So I ran. I tried to rationalize the decision by saying I was doing it for you, because you were better off without me, but it was an entirely selfish choice.” She looks up at Laura, who is tearing up now. She tentatively reaches a hand out and rests it on her knee. Laura stares at it but she makes no move to take it off. Carmilla continues, “I thought that I could live without you. I traveled while I was gone. I went everywhere my Mother had never allowed me to. I saw beautiful things. But the experience was never full. I always felt like I was missing something. I was in Venice, on a Gondola through the city, when I realized what I was missing was you. Every beautiful thing I saw was nothing in comparison to seeing you.” She takes a deep breath then. “I listened to every single one of your voicemails. Over and over. I never had the heart to call you back, and for that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left without giving you a proper goodbye. I’m sorry I didn’t give you the option to change to my mind. But I do believe I needed these six months away. To accept that I’m ready to let you love me. If you’ll still have me.” Laura looks at her now and her eyes are wide open and honest. Laura sighs.

“I still love you. I’m always going to love you. I meant every word I said in those voicemails. You’re my soulmate, Carmilla.” Laura pauses, swallowing. Carmilla looks hopeful. “But I’m still angry with you. You didn’t even try to let me stop you. You walked away without giving my feelings any consideration. You were only thinking of yourself. Do you know how hard it was for me to pick myself up after you left? I could barely leave the room for weeks and even that was horrible because everything in here reminds me of you! You might have needed the six months away to help you find yourself but I spent them thinking I was _never_ going to see you again. You took all of the power in this relationship into your hands and you played with it. You played with me.” Her voice is catching in her throat and there’s pain written on Carmilla’s face. Laura knows that what she’s saying can’t be easy for Carmilla to hear but she has to say it. “I _love_ you. I truly do. But I don’t think I can just jump back into a relationship with you. I have to learn to trust that you won’t leave when you decide we’re getting to intense for you.” Carmilla’s the one to let out a long sigh now. She nods.

“I understand. And I’ll prove to you every single day that I’m in this for as long as you want me.” She promises and Laura pauses. She nods quickly. There’s a silence that falls between them. After a few moments, she turns to Carmilla.

“So tell me about Venice, was it lovely?” And Carmilla smiles.

Even though, she’s angry and betrayed and still _hurt_ , she thinks that it’s the loveliest thing she’s ever seen.

-

She calls her date and she cancels, telling her that something’s come up and yeah, maybe they’ll reschedule sometime.

(They don’t).

-

It takes two months before Laura kisses Carmilla again.

They still live in the same room. Carmilla moves back in officially and Perry gives her a talking-to that leaves Carmilla squirming uncomfortably and checking her pillowcase obsessively for a nearly a week.

Their relationship is tentative but Laura knows she’s just as in love with Carmilla as she was the day she left. It’s just a matter of trusting herself to let that love show.

Carmilla lives up to her word and she makes a point to start wooing Laura all over again. She leaves chocolate on Laura’s pillow and brings her flowers every other day. She walks her to class and holds her books and sometimes her hand. Carmilla takes her out for coffee every day and out to dinner on occasion. She kisses Laura’s knuckles and sits on the bed next to her when she falls asleep.

They’re walking home from a dinner together under the cover of starlight when Laura pauses. They’re in a park and Laura can hear crickets chirping. The sky is incredibly clear and Carmilla is looking at her with a shy grin and the moment is altogether too perfect. She raises their hands and laces their fingers together. Her free hand moves up to touch Carmilla’s face. Carmilla leans into the touch, her eyes fluttering closed. “You’re beautiful.” Laura whispers. Carmilla lets out a breathy laugh.

“Not as beautiful as you.” She whispers in return. Laura leans in and presses their lips together gently. Their hands untangle and Laura’s arms snake around Carmilla’s shoulders. Carmilla pulls Laura tight against her, her hands resting on her sides. The kiss is slow and Laura puts every single thing she’s felt for the past eight months into it.

When they finally pull apart, Laura’s a little bit dizzy. She giggles and presses her forehead to Carmilla’s. Carmilla is grinning and it’s a beautiful sight. Laura thinks it’s probably even more beautiful than every famous painting in the world, especially in that moment.

They walk home together, giggling and stopping along the way to kiss.

It takes them nearly an hour more to get home.

-

They’re officially together again after that and Perry brings them a plate of congratulatory brownies, LaFontaine whispering that they tried to convince her to make a ‘Congrats on the Sex’ cake but Perry refused. Laura laughs and they eat the brownies together in bed, making a game to see who can throw the most pieces into the others mouth.

Their relationship isn’t perfect and they have moments sometimes where they’re both eager to tear the other down or run away.

But they don’t.

They stay.

Because that’s what soulmates do.


End file.
